Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Question: WHERE IS THE INTRACTABLE VIDEO FOR AKERCOCKE??? From: awny_mcprawny@yahoo.co.uk

Answer: It was filmed and completed but the label and band decided to shelve it due to substandard production values.Its unlikely to see the light of day because it just looks horrible, sorry.Anyone who knows Akercocke knows they have a red-blooded, eager admiration for the female form, so on the release of the last album "Words That Go Unspoken.." the band fancied a concept video this time- it was to be a softcore porn movie-esque type of affair, with no band members in it, just girls in various state of undress.Not a bad idea in principle, but Earache could'nt see the point in it, having done a similar tho much much more hardcore-porn type clip for December Wolves some years before. No Tv stations can ever play it and we had to be careful about the legalities of even streaming such material from our website because nudity is strictly for over 18's, and there are laws to abide by, so the idea faded away.

Earlier this year by sheer chance a well-known Uk soft-porn director contacted us about using a band in a scene from his new movie.We jumped at the chance to resurrect the 'intractable' video clip idea, but with no nudity- so the band duly arrived at the soho strip club in london where they were filmed performing the song with a host of strippers gryrating around them.The photo above is from the shoot, and it looks visually ok, but for some reason the resulting video footage is quite amateurishly shot, sub-par, and not really usable.So thats why we shelved the clip.The filmed scene will no doubt appear in the porn movie sometime soon tho, so check your local adult shop, dodgy Uk porn section.

As an aside- Earache has shelved a few clips over the years because they are simply too substandard for showing, mostly cos of lame subject matter; The Haunted's 'Chasm' clip off their debut featured BMX riders wipeing out hard on concrete..Iron Monkey's clip is just ECW wrestlers..Massacres clip was too dark..Ultraviolence clip featured schoolkids headbanging to 'Paranoid', which looked shite.

Question: I don\'t know if anyone has ever asked this, but what is the history behind Sub Bass records? Was it an actual Earache imprint, or just a distro deal? It seems like it came and went pretty quickly though. From: johnwalbridgeiv@yahoo.com

Answer: In the early 90's Sub Bass was the label where Earache released its non- metal titles, like Lawnmower deth's pop offshoot 'Six Yard Box' and manchester's heavy Industro- grind-sampling duo-'Mighty Force'..but within a short while in the UK a brand new style of street music was taking shape- Jungle Rave- (later named drum n bass)which was solely powered by the pirate radio stations and underground clubs and DJ's and MC's.It was a world away from the metal/grind scene Earache had spearheaded, but to my ears it was an genuinely exciting new form of music- cos it was literally quite alien from anything that had gone before, being mostly created by Black and Asian kids using drum loops on computers.Prodigy had broken the mainstream, but behind them was a whole underground of acts like Acen who were a stalwart on the pirate radio stations...

By sheer chance I came to know Steve Gurney who was Sound engineer for Cathedral, and his acid- techno act Larceny became the first proper Sub Bass release on 12", closely followed by Jungle Rave Dj's like DJ Senator,Fenetik, and the Belgium-esque Aciiid sounds of F.U.J.Famed BBC Radio DJ played a few of the records on his show which was cool, but the label itself was no more than a dalliance of mine, our efforts were still 100% on the metal acts, sub bass was side show.Out of the blue another UK rave techno label called Suburban base (Sub Base) issued us with a cease and desist order over use of the name, so Sub Bass was duly folded.

Looking back it was probably a precursor to the extreme hardcore techno/gabba sounds Earache released later in the decade like Industrial strength, Ultraviolence, DOA etc.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Question: when is the Earache Christmas Party this year. What bands are playing and how can I get 2 tickets.From Mike.From: geordiemetallica@gmail.com

Answer: Yeah its fast coming- better book 12 dec off work cos the Xmas Thrash bash is set for Monday 11th december at Junktion 7 in Nottingham.We have our new signing EVILE playing a set but the main club is actually regular monday extreme metal night@ junktion 7 called Overdrive, hence the £2 entry on the door. You dont need any tickets- just turn up!leave yer liver at the door..

Question: Do you have a list of production runs for every Earache release? I am trying to compile a list of the rarest metal cd\'s, and was wondering if you keep track of this sort of thing.

Thanks!M!ke From: entropy9203@earache.com

Answer: Hi mike- you can find a sort of complete-ish list of the pressings numbers and differnet versions of our releases on our CATALOG page on our website.You can see that many releases have had for instance a 1000 pressing on vinyl or picture disc.Some titles by our major bands have had weird events which made them rare- a good example is the first pressing of Carcass "choice cuts" which did not have "This Is your life" on it- limited to approx 70 copies or so that went out to journalists..that version was a promo disc which was pulled from circulation because of the onset of ken's serious illness in 1999.Later in 2004 it was issued with that extra track.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Question: Hi,I have asked this question before but didnt recieve an answer, I am looking for the name of a VHS tape or maybe its been made a DVD now that had a bunch of Death Metal bands featured as a Death Metal band special, the first feature was on NAPALM DEATH and they had just released HARMONY CORRUPTION, There was a big special on the FLORIDA DEATH SCENE with interviews featuring Chuck from DEATH, CANCER, OBITUARY and also a Morrissound report as well. I can not find it anywhere and I think its because I am getting the name wrong. Can you help me out.?Lee From: angry_mob2005@yahoo.com.au

Answer: yeah those bands were interviewed, along with me for a special episode of the early 90's metal documentary VHS series called'Hard n Heavy' - its now been repackaged by some enterprising fellows, renamed "Grindcore"with some truly awful artwork, and released on DVD on Universal.Earache has nothing to do with this by the way.BUT there is no florida scene report on this DVD- i think you might have to search for the actual hard n heavy original VHS, some of the original VHS are now released on DVD but mainly the ones featuring OZZy or Nirvana etc from that era.

Question: WHere can I find some new reviews specifically on Exmortem, and Cult of Luna? The links page for some reason or another is down and I have checked out almost every webzine under the sun....Any new ones to look for Earache bands on? From: m3tal_ch1ck666@yahoo.com

Answer: we collect a lot of the reviews and features on our bands and place them online in our Press Archive. You can read all the reviews HERE if you hit last modified button twice it arranges the collection of reviews in newest order.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Question: Hey guys, is Extreme Metal Racing being released in Australia? If so, when and where can I get it (if you know). Keep metal extreme guys! From:

Answer: Well after a few false starts -mainly cos Sony wanted to improve the load times of the game before it was released--its definately finally coming out just in time for xmas.Friday December 8th sees the release of PS2 game Earache Extreme Metal Racing in UK. You can order it for £14.99 delivered, from HMV online- they ship worldwide.Also check out the competitionto win it free along with a BC Rich guitar!

Question: This might be a real dumb question but I\'m just curious to know this:

I have a copy of Municipal Waste\'s \"Hazardous Mutation\" but it\'s slightly different from the present day pics I see of the album cover. Mine has a yellow logo in the top middle of the cover while other versions have a red logo to the right top side. Any particular reason there are two existing album cover versions or am I just looking into the cover thing too much? From: davidaloca@gmail.com

Answer: the yellow logo cover is the only one we have released. the red logo image used on our website was an early mock up which the webmaster uses on the site whenever the album is referred to, but it was'nt released like that actually. Sorry for the confusion.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Question: Is it true that earache discovered System of a down, Hatebreed and Converge, as aparently their first big shows were supporting earache bands ( ok napalm death) did earache look into signing any of them after the event? From:

Answer: Yes this is partly true in the case of SOAD..Earache was the very first label to offer a record deal to System Of A Down..sounds unbeleivable now but its 100% true.Our good friend Dino of LA band Fear Factory dropped by the UK office with the demo of SOAD, produced by non other than ex-earache artist Alex Newport, and we loved what we heard, especially their political stance which was unheard of in the burgeoning LA nu-metal scene, they stood out in what was a mass of korn clone bands, or Sugar Ray type jokey acts, they had more intensity.

I immediately flew to LA to meet with the band and manager and the band were flattered that a UK label had taken a major interest in them, so we got close to signing offical contracts, but in the end the major labels began to make them offers nd they signed wit h Rick Rubin's American Recordings.Serge still to this day remembers that Earache was the first label to appreciate what they were about.

Answer:Thats a pretty stupid question- everyone knows we sign bands from all over the damn place,well, eveywhere except Germany and Japan.Yup- your theory is wrong cos we had french crazy-core band Carnival In Coal on the Elitist sub-label just last year.Why Earache has never signed a German band, i just dont know, it is pretty strange after all this time in business.As for Psychobolia, thanks for the CD but it didnt grab us, sorry.

Monday, November 06, 2006

1) Is it true what some magazines have said in that the founding of the band to-mera is what killed elitist, because lee wanted to conectrate on being in a band again?

2) Out of the newer earache style uk indies visible noise, anticulture, in at the deep end and so on which one has impressed you the most, of those labels which one do you think will reach the status that earache is at now in a few years? From:

Answer: Elitist was closed by Earache,mainly through our loss of confidence in the label due to underperforming sales, it was purely a business decision.We also stopped working with The Codebreaker and Willowtip as sub-labels for the same reasons.Some months earlier, Lee had founded To-mera with Julie Kiss and considered releasing it on Elitist but we declined.I guess To-mera is touring a lot now and seems to be going down well.As for the new UK indie metal labels- Visible Noise is hands down the most impressive 'new' label in the UK, it sells more Cds than the rest of the labels you mention combined, and in the summer of 2006 had a UK number 1 album by Lostprophets, which is an unbeleivable acheivement for a truly Indie label,in any genre in fact, never mind Metal.VN is run by fabulous folks too, who genuinely look after their fans, hence 100% deserve the success they acheived.The owners of Anticulture and In At The Deep End i have met a few times, and they too are committed to the Indie cause but do not have any massively succesful bands,not yet anyways, so can hardly be compared to VN.Steev from Anticulture has too wide a range of tastes i think, with acts ranging from Interlock to Gutworm or Miksha all sounding a bit too different to give the label an identity which it needs early on. In At The Deep End has Send More Paramedics who are a great band (epic double album coming next we hear!)and could be a huge success if the breaks go their way.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Question: Is there a specific reason that there were none, or a very minumum number of black metal bands signed to Earache records? I notice the only black metal band Earache obtained in sometime is Annal Nathrakh but that\'s about it I can see from the catalog of bands. Is it based on preference (maybe Earache isn\'t too fond of the black metal genre) or is it based on just the idea that Earache is soley for death metal and grindcore? I believe I read that somewhere once... From: davidaloca@gmail.com

Answer: Yes you are right, there is precious little Black Metal on the Earache label catalog,sure, its deliberate, and its for a variety of reasons.When Black Metal began to break out of Norway, in the early 90's, Earache at the time was enjoying its golden period..we had acts like Entombed appear at number 3 in the Swedish National sales charts for instance, and our Grindcore and Death Metal acts like Napalm Death & Morbid Angel were selling well.I wouldnt say we looked down on the new BM scene but our acts certainly did- due to pure arrogance,bands like Entombed would just laugh at the shambolic playing, the non-existant production of the early recordings, and the 'panda' make up and DIY spike armbands that did admittedly make the early BM acts look and sound kinda cheesy.Little did they know it would usurp them in popularity within a few years.

The world exteme music scene was damn tiny in late 80's so naturally I had known Euronymous, I sold Mayhem's first LP Deathcrush for him in the uk, when I had a mailorder, plus I met him in Oslo on tour with Napalm Death, he was a cool guy who worshipped, and looked a bit like, Cronos from Venom- he seemed to be involved in a cool growing scene in Oslo that was keeping the flame alive to true satanic metal,a style which had died out everywhere else.Later he named the catalog numbers of his newly formed label Deathlike Silence "Anti Mosh" which was a blatant jibe at Earache's then runaway success,so our friendship immediately cooled a lot after that, as was our interest in BM, because it seemed to be anti-us!

Earache was also put off getting involved by the fact that many of my UK friends had formed new fledgling labels to sign the first wave of BM bands and we didnt want to rock the boat of such new start-up labels- Neil(Nihil) started Cacophonous to release Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth,Lee Barrett (tho I didn't know him then) had formed Candlelight to sign Emperor, Hammy at Peaceville had signed Darkthrone (via Deaf records).Earache did not want to encroach on those labels.

However,it was obvious in 1992 or so, we had to sign one of the new Norwegian BM acts tho - and frankly, The ONLY band which Earache wanted to sign was Burzum, because they stood out musically and seemed to offer something very different to the rest.Varg was very interested, so he flew into the UK for a meeting at our Nottingham offices, and a deal was struck, but we had problems with his right wing racist views, so quietly backed out of the deal.You can read that story here in Julys blog.

So for various reasons Earache ended up with NO black metal bands during the 90's.